Mindy buried herself in Lucia’s body, wet and aching and so sensitive that she thought to move one inch would hurt unbearably. She was ashamed of herself. She was so damn proud.
Lucia was mercifully silent. She let Mindy stop kissing her, just ran her palms under Mindy’s shirt and down the back of her pants, not cupping, not feeling, but like she was warming her hands on a fire.
“So, uh,” Lucia faltered. “That was kinda hot.”
Mindy’s head was shaking, grinding like a broken machine. She couldn’t think, she couldn’t speak. She couldn’t believe her pussy still felt so—she shook her head on Lucia’s body. Why was she still pretending? Why were they still dancing around this? She wanted to tell Lucia how much she meant to her, how good it had been…the words came out of her like she’d held her breath for a full minute and was only now gulping in air: “I want my first time to be with you.”
Lucia laughed, a crackle deep in her throat that Mindy felt shake her. “Yeah, bitch, I noticed. I don’t even blame you. I’m pretty fine.”
“Don’t joke…”
“I’m not joking, I’m—I’ve thought about it. You being a lezzie and all. And it makes sense. You shouldn’t just let some Justin Bieber-looking job pop it for you. It should be someone who loves you. Someone who’ll make it special for you. So, you know, I’ll do.”
Was this what being high felt like? Mindy felt excited, giggly, ecstatic—happy. “You know, boys do it all the time, according to the fanfic I read. It’s not a big deal. So why should they get to have all the fun? It’s just, like, our fingers and our mouths, and you don’t even have use of those, your leg was just—”
“Yeah, that soggy feeling in my jeans is getting that across,” Lucia giggled.
“I just kinda thought you would make the first move. Or that I’d have time to think of some clever way to bring it up. Now that you’re a vampire. You could eat some garlic bread tomorrow and be outta here.”
“Minz, c’mon, what do you think, that I’m some kind of—okay, yeah, I might. I’m putting you on don’t-let-me-have-garlic-bread duty.”
Mindy looked up, saw Lucia smiling. It was like looking into the sun. She ducked her head back down, lodged her own grin in Lucia’s chest. “Just…do whatever it was you did when it was your first time. I’m sure that’ll be great.”
“Christ, with the low standards, Needy. I gave it up to Phil Digart because he double-dog-dared me too.”
“I knew you two had a thing!”
“Anyway, get on the bed. You keep rubbing against me the way you are and I’m gonna get rug burn. And we’re not doing anything with you all tensed up like you don’t know if The 100 is getting renewed. I am giving you a massage.”
And something let the fear in. Mindy could see this going and going and going. She would give up everything to Lucia. Absolutely everything. She’d die for her—sucked dry, dry as the desert. Nothing left but sand and bone. Did Lucia know that? Did she know how special this was? Or—did she care?
Mindy was up, walking on unsteady legs, and the light of the bathroom beckoned to her. “I have to wash up,” she said. “I’m all sweaty—I should wash up.”
Mindy took off her clothes in the shower, with the water already on. The hot water made it worse. The thing pounding in Mindy’s body got louder. It was nearly free. Mindy put her hand on the dial. She was almost turning the water to cold. She was seeing herself doing it, thinking to herself she needed to do it, lying about how good it would feel to wash off the sick heat Lucia had inflicted her with. To bury it in winter.
Her hand slipped off the wet dial and didn’t return. It went back to the fire. To Mindy’s burning body. It traveled over her skin, but there was only one place it could go. Where Mindy was hottest.
For precious, addictive seconds, Mindy could feel what Lucia had done to her.
She sobbed out her orgasm. Her body shook and convulsed with it, came apart at the seams. And she thought—so clearly—that it wasn’t her that was shaking and pleasuring her body. It was Lucia.
Planted against the tiles, feeling the warm water rain down, knowing there was a heat inside her that had dwindled but would not, could not, go out—Mindy knew. She didn’t realize, she had known before; now she just knew she knew.
She was in love with Lucia. Hopelessly in love with her. Despairingly in love with her. Her love wasn’t a flower or a swan—it was a tumor and a sickness. It had grown inside her. It had taken her over. She was infested with it. The parts of her that could love someone else, that were not Lucia’s to command—they had died off. Flowers in a weed-infested garden. All that was left was this dark, venomous thing that owed total allegiance to Lucia. It was terrible. It was beautiful. She didn’t think she could be happy with anyone or anything but Lucia.
And she also knew that she could never, ever let Lucia know.
She washed with the bar of Dove soap, the loofah, the soap again—shampoo, conditioner—loofah. Mindy didn’t know how good Lucia’s sense of smell was, now, but she didn’t want her to know. She dried herself with the towel and noticed that Lucia had slipped a set of fresh clothes through the door onto the counter. And Mindy knew, knew, Lucia had just stuck her arm through, not looked, not lingered. It was a funny feeling—trusting someone. You didn’t really think about it until you did.
Her old clothes laid on the floor where she’d pulled them off—Mindy still remembered the rush of the air on her bare skin, wanting to run back to Lucia and… There wasn’t much blood on them. She could’ve messed up eating something with ketchup. Just a dab on her collar. Lucia hadn’t let much spill. It was too precious for that.
Mindy dressed and was surprised by how put-together her outfit looked in the mirror. A jade-green knit blouse, a dark brown skirt, a set of black leggings… They looked cute together. Leave it to Lucia to put together a nice ensemble for you after she drank your blood. Mindy walked back into her bedroom and Lucia was on the bed. She was gorgeous. God, how had she ever been human when she’d always looked like that?
Lucia patted the bed next to her. It was like a magnet had been turned on and Mindy was made of metal. She took a step forward that dragged on the carpet. “You wanted to take things slow? With a massage?”
“That not how they do it in your lesbian porn?” Lucia asked, head tilted.
“Slow is fine. Slow is perfect. Just, would it be okay if—”
“Mindy, you came on my leg. You can tell me whatever.”
Mindy nodded for her. “If nothing else happened tonight, that’d be fine.”
Lucia’s eyes narrowed. She was suddenly hard to read. But she nodded. “That’s what you want?”
“I, ah—” She winced, knowing Lucia must be hating her wavering. Tried to mollify her by taking step after step toward the bed. “I would want it to be special—it’s stupid, I know, it’s never special—but, like, it’d be special because it’s us—and tonight is already special, you drinking my blood and all—so I don’t want to cram all the special into one night and have it over with, right? I wanna save some. Like with Halloween candy. You don’t eat it all in one go, you’d make yourself sick. You eat some one night, then some more the next, then some more the next.”
Lucia nodded imperially, like she was a queen listening to a courtier, and then she extended her hand.
Mindy took it, feeling like they were about to dance, and Lucia pulled her gently onto the bed. Wrapped her up in her arms—it felt like being bathed in silk.
“What candy do you want to have tonight?” Lucia asked, another layer of silk wrapping around Mindy.
Mindy said the first thing that came into her head. “Scratch my back?”
Lucia’s head went back, a little incredulous: “Specific.”
“And my head. You’ve never had your head scratched? It feels supergood.”
“Just…” Lucia reached into Mindy’s hair and raked her nails along Mindy’s scalp. “Like that?”
Mindy crooned with pleasure. “Yeah. That’s pe
rfect.”
It was. Just enough Lucia to stop her body from demanding more, to let her relax. She was so tense, so worn out, that the tension was the only thing holding her up. Without it, she’d swoon like a Jane Austen lady. So, as it leaked from her body, she felt less and less grounded. She just slipped away, feeling Lucia’s claws travel her skin, marking her with a thousand invisible scratches. She dreamed that her blood was singing to her, humming in her veins, but Lucia never let it out.
CHAPTER 19
Mindy wondered why she kept dreaming that she was Lucia. It seemed like something out of a bad Freudian textbook, a shitty explanation of why a woman was the killer in some bad eighties slasher movie. You keep picturing yourself as Lucia, because by dating another woman, you wanted to become another woman. Self-loathing! Christ, what horse piss. Yet her subconscious just kept on giving, showing her Lucia’s view of her own body sleeping.
As Lucia, she bent over her own body, examining the bandage on Mindy’s neck like it was a slide under a microscope. Her fingers brushed over it, feather-light against the texture of the tan rubber and Mindy’s own soft skin. Like some phantom limb syndrome, Mindy could feel the lightness of Lucia’s touch back in her own body—mail from the home front. Then Lucia’s fingernail ticked over the adhesive borders, maybe seeing if they were sticking properly, maybe playing at peeling them away. The downside of being Lucia was that Mindy could see everything but Lucia’s face. Mindy wanted to know what emotion she wore as she lowered herself to Mindy’s wound like a fawning worshipper. Regret? Lust? Or nothing at all?
Apparently satisfied, Lucia pulled away, leaving the bandage alone. She drew Mindy’s blanket up to her chin, gingerly tucking it about Mindy’s shoulders and just under her sides to make a sort of Mindy burrito. Then she took Mindy’s pulse—Mindy hadn’t even known that she knew what a pulse was. While she did it, her thumb rubbed softly against Mindy’s chin. She took her hand away, and Mindy felt weirdly wrong without the phantom chill of her touch. Then Lucia bent again, the static strangeness of her unbreathing lips moving on Mindy’s forehead in the gentlest touch of all—What are you doing? Mindy asked.
“Nothing!” Lucia replied, jerking upright. “Are you…talking in your sleep?”
Don’t change the subject. You were going to kiss my forehead! Mindy cried, overjoyed, and then even more overjoyed at Lucia’s mortification. She noticed, at the same time Lucia did, that she was asleep and her lips weren’t moving. You’re like the first gay Disney princess.
“So, like Elsa?” Lucia went to Mindy’s nightstand, taking her phone and puzzling out how to take a picture with it, then holding it out as if to take a selfie. Mindy was able to see herself—correction, El—in the phone’s screen. “I think we have a psychic link! This is awesome! If I ever turn into a serial killer, you can help some loose-cannon cop who plays by his own rules to hunt me down!”
Uh-huh. Still wanna make out with my hairline? Mindy asked—weird without a voice. She wondered if it was weird for Lucia, hearing without her ears.
“There was a bug! I was trying to get it.”
With your face?
“Hey, you’re the one dreaming about me. You make me look butch. And I’m so girly, I can name every single reason it doesn’t make sense for Dan Humphrey to be Gossip Girl.”
Lucia looked back at the sleeping Mindy while Mindy tried to look at the phone screen in her field of vision. Weird sensation, having her “eyes” not focus on her even when she looked. A bit like not wearing her glasses.
Stop looking at my body. I look so dumb while I’m asleep.
“No you don’t!”
I’m drooling!
“You drool so sweetly and innocently.” In a flash, Lucia was leaning over the sleeping Mindy, wiping the corners of her mouth with her sleeve. “Yeah, a lot of people do that around my tight ass.”
Oh God, Mindy could see herself blushing in her sleep. “Cut it out,” she growled sleepily.
Lucia sighed. “Why won’t you let me love you? Hey! How about I take you hunting?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not? Don’t you just love being inside me?” Lucia asked dolefully, running her hands over her body.
“I’m not gonna love drinking someone’s blood, Hannibal. No matter how long your legs are.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot.” Lucia poked a finger into her own shoulder. “You’re usually around here, aren’t you?”
“Only cuz I don’t wear heels.”
Mindy felt herself-as-Lucia reaching down and pulling her shirt over her full, sated belly. “How about we take a shower together?”
“Can’t we just cuddle?”
“Tease,” Lucia said, even as she laid out on the bed, resting her head on Mindy’s shoulder.
She took Mindy’s hand and put it on the skin of her tummy. It felt warm. A chilled warmth, like—hot water poured into a cold bowl. Odd, feeling herself against Lucia’s feeling her. It was like the 3D bit in a Magic Eye picture, but it wouldn’t come into focus. She was coming awake a little, in that haze where she wasn’t really tired but didn’t have to get up. Just luxuriating in the comfort of her bed, the comfort of Lucia.
“Feel that?” Lucia grinned. “That’s you. Your essence. You’re inside me.”
“I wouldn’t put it that way.”
“Like, I’ve never had a guy come inside me. I’ve always used a condom. I haven’t even swallowed!”
“Your Wikipedia page suddenly has too much detail.”
“Oh, what, scared of a little gay? Since when? I’ll tell you what, you’d know this if you had friends, but all the best friendships have a little gay in them. Watch me hug you with my legs in friendship.”
Lucia scampered on top of Mindy, snaking her legs around her waist. Lucia’s thighs were cool and hard around Mindy’s middle, almost like stone, but there was an aliveness to them that was hard to explain. Sort of like a tree, or fur instead of carpet. You could just tell it was real.
“There now,” Lucia said, now wrapping Mindy up in her arms. Mindy could feel a deep-seated warmth in Lucia’s chest, a tinge of it in her extremities. The blood. It was warming her. “Isn’t that good friendship?”
“For a koala, maybe.”
“It’s just a hug,” Lucia said. Her face was over Mindy’s, her hair falling down around Mindy’s face on all sides. They were in their own little world.
“It’s spooning.”
“No, this is spooning.” Lucia moved around so that Mindy was on her side, and Lucia behind her, arms and legs shifting, tightening around Mindy. It should’ve been less intimate, Mindy staring straight ahead now, Lucia at her back. It felt warmer, though. More dangerous. She was trusting Lucia not to bite her—maybe Lucia was trusting her not to be bitten?
“That’s good spooning,” Mindy admitted. She wasn’t sure what else to say.
“Yeah…” Suddenly, Lucia started pumping her hips, as if dry-humping Mindy. “Yeah, take it bitch! You love my hard dick!”
The sweet romantic moment was gone before Mindy had fully realized they were having a moment. “You don’t have a penis, El.”
“You love my imaginary penis!”
Mindy yawned. “I’m still asleep a little. Quit it before you wake me up.”
Lucia stopped. “You got me. I’m a two-pump chump. You know, this is useful, we should think of a way to use this. Maybe if we’re taking a test, you could pop into my brain for a minute…”
“Lucia! That would be dishonest!”
“Or maybe if some guy is bothering me, you could jump into my body and drive him off with your awkwardness.”
“Hurtful. Although…”
“Is this the shower idea again? Don’t steal my shower idea. You could really benefit from knowing my routine, but it wasn’t your idea.”
Mindy spoke through a yawn—so weird. “Okay, so we know that rest home attack wasn’t you, it was the vampire stirring up shit. You could check it out with me riding shotgun in your head—we’d be
like a fusion of your vampire badassness and my all ‘A’s report card.”
“Alright, but then I’m taking a shower.”
* * *
It was a simple plan. Lucia would speed to the rest home while Mindy synced up their minds. Then they would check it out without Mindy’s fleshy vulnerabilities in harm’s way. Lucia liked that part. She was very keen on Mindy not entering a vampire’s ‘hunting ground’ and made her promise that if something went wrong and Mindy had to play cavalry, she would get Seb to back her up.
Mindy waited in her room, turning on the ceiling light as well as her lamp. It didn’t help. The light pushing out of her dark window into the night, with its flicking street lamp, just underscored how alone she was. Her parents were gone on another retreat, the hour late enough for the roads to be clear except for the occasional ghostly car that only emphasized her isolation. After the shocking intimacy of her connection to Lucia, being apart gave steroids to her nervousness. The seconds ticked by like hours, as she wondered when Lucia would call, worrying for her. “Hunting ground,” Lucia had said. Christ!
Her phone vibrated. Mindy snatched it up, I’m here. Come inside me.
They really had to get a move-on for coming up with some hip lingo for this stuff, like they had in sci-fi movies. Maybe when Mindy was using the psychic link, she was “riding” Lucia? No…
Mindy tried to push herself back into Lucia, but the connection was difficult and she was unskilled. She thought she got flashes of what Lucia was seeing, but it could’ve just been the colors inside her eyelids putting on a clever disguise. Her phone buzzed again: What’s taking so long?
Mindy snatched it up: It’s not as easy as it looks!
She emptied her mind and did a breathing exercise she’d seen on YouTube, and Lucia just came to her. Filled her.
The rest home was a squat, homely sort of building. One story, spread out like an unwashed rash, surrounded by a fence. One side hunched against the ever-diminishing woods of Carfax, the other open to the highway. Lucia was in the trees, surveying the barred windows, the tiles atop the roof. Then she looked down at her cleavage. “Nice.”
Ex-Wives of Dracula Page 24